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Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Review: Island In The Sea: A Majorca Love Story by Anita Hughes

A romance between an ambitious young music executive and the aging celebrity song writer who is 18 months overdue on his latest delivery.

My Review:

The description of this book is seriously misleading! From reading that description, you would think that this is a love story (heck, you should think that even from the title!) And that's where you'd be wrong -- for almost the entire book, the MC Juliet (the "ambitious young music executive") is cozying up to a tennis player from New Zealand. It isn't until the last 20% of the book that she decides (somehow) that she is in love with a song writer -- despite absolutely no indications in the rest of the book that she has any romantic interest in this guy, she slips and falls and he helps her up and she decides she's in love! Very bizarre. I felt a bit blindsided. The one saving grace in this book is the setting -- I want to visit Majorca so much! But I didn't really need to know every single stitch of clothing each person wore, every morsel of food they ate and, again, the daily spritz of perfume.

Unfortunately, the only other book I've read by Anita Hughes, Rome in Love, was also a bust for me and for many of the same reasons -- I can't seem to jive with her third person POV, which tells rather than shows. I can't say that I would recommend this one -- I would instead read Elin Hilderbrand, Nancy Thayer, or Rosalind James for contemporary summer island romance. Island in the Seacomes out next week, April 16, 2016, and you can purchase HERE!

"Don't tell me you are in a long distance relationship filled with Skype session and endless texts." Lionel sighed. "The fastest way to end the human race is to conduct love affairs through a metallic device that AutoCorrects every original thought."

7 comments:

Oh, my! I definitely would have thought romance, love story, etc. from the cover AND the title. I'm so bad to judge a book by its cover, and this is one I would have picked up thinking that it would slay me. I'm sorry it didn't work for you, but two for two on the author's books? At least you gave the author's work another shot.

Well I would feel totally misled by this one... and probably be annoyed by it. The cover and title scream summer romance. At least it had a great setting! Sounds like you've given this author a fair shot and it hasn't gone well.

I hate telling instead of showing. Really an annoying way of storytelling. This doesn't sound like my kind of story. Focusing on one romance for 80% of the book only to switch the last 20%? No thanks. Sorry to hear this was a dud. :(

I'm with you and Kathy, this book totally sounds like it would have more romance than it did. The 'romance' that was there doesn't sound like it would work for me either. I need some build-up so that I can feel something. Ugh!